The report also noted the arrest of Turkish academic Mustafa Akyol by the Federal Territories Islamic Religious Department, for giving a talk on Islam without official credentials from religious authorities.

Lawyers for Liberty executive director Eric Paulsen said that the local authorities practise double standards in charging anyone who is seen as a threat to them. — Picture by Yusof Mat Isa – Taken from the Malay Mail Online

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 13 — The erosion of human rights in Malaysia for the past year has put the country in the same boat as Myanmar, lawyer Eric Paulsen alleged today.

The Lawyers For Liberty (LFL) executive director reasoned that if the government continues to silence dissenters through various laws, the situation here would worsen like in Myanmar, where citizens can be incarcerated for social media postings.

“It is sad but I’m constantly thinking of Myanmar. I have no doubt that the way Malaysia is going down the road, we would be mentioned next to Myanmar.

“Someone in Myanmar was recently charged for Facebook comments and was jailed. We can see a trend here that if Myanmar does this, we also do something similar. It is vice versa,” he told reporters at the launch of this year’s Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. Read more →

Malaysia’s human rights situation deteriorated sharply during 2015, as Putrajaya increased its campaign of harassment and repression against activists, political opposition figures, and the media, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today.

The report came hours after Malaysia’s rank on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) in 2015 dropped by four points to 54, compared with 50 in 2014, said global corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI).

“The Malaysian government responded to public criticism of a major corruption scandal and its persecution of former opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim with a wave of repression,” Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, said in a statement.

“Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak is trampling on fundamental rights to hush up corruption allegations and maintain his grip on power.”

In the 659-page World Report 2016, the New York-based HRW executive director Kenneth Roth wrote that the spread of terrorist attacks beyond the Middle East and the huge flows of refugees spawned by repression and conflict led many governments to curtail rights in misguided efforts to protect their security. Read more →

Malaysia: Crackdown on Rights IntensifiesActivists, Political Opposition, Media Under Attack

(New York, January 27, 2016) – Malaysia’s human rights situation deteriorated sharply during 2015, as the government increased its campaign of harassment and repression against activists, political opposition figures, and the media, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2016.

In the 659-page World Report 2016, its 26th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that the spread of terrorist attacks beyond the Middle East and the huge flows of refugees spawned by repression and conflict led many governments to curtail rights in misguided efforts to protect their security. At the same time, authoritarian governments throughout the world, fearful of peaceful dissent that is often magnified by social media, embarked on the most intense crackdown on independent groups in recent times. Read more →

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